It seemed so, indeed.  The major was well mounted, but the swift Indian runners managed to surround him on three sides, and force him towards the river bluffs, from which escape seemed impossible.

With redoubled shouts they closed in upon him.  The major, somewhat ignorant of the situation, pushed onward till he suddenly found himself on the brow of a precipice which descended at an almost vertical inclination for a hundred and fifty feet.  Here was a frightful dilemma.  To right and left the Indian runners could be seen, their lines extending to the verge of the cliff.  What was to be done? surrender to the Indians, attempt to dash through their line, or leap the cliff?  Each way promised death.  But death by fall was preferable to death by torture.  And a forlorn hope of life remained.  The horse was a powerful one, and might make the descent in safety.  Gathering his reins tightly in his right hand, while his left grasped his rifle, McCullough spurred the noble animal forward, and in an instant was over the brow of the cliff, and falling rather than dashing down its steep declivity.

By unlooked-for good fortune the foot of the bluff was reached in safety.  Into the creek dashed horse and man, and in a minute or two the daring fugitive was across and safe from his savage pursuers.

The Indians returned disappointed to the vicinity of the fort.  Here they found that their leader had decided on abandoning the assault.  The reinforcements received, and the probability that others were on the way, discouraged the renegade, and Girty led his horde of savages away, first doing all the harm in his power by burning the houses of the settlement, and killing about three hundred cattle belonging to the settlers.

The defence of Fort Henry was one of the most striking for the courage displayed, and the success of the defenders, of the many gallant contests with the Indian foe of that age of stirring deeds.  Aside from those killed in ambush, not a man of the garrison had lost his life.  Of the assailants, from sixty to one hundred fell.  Simon Girty and his Indians had received a lesson they would not soon forget.

DANIEL BOONE, THE PIONEER OF KENTUCKY.

The region of Kentucky, that “dark and bloody ground” of Indian warfare, lay long unknown to the whites.  No Indians even dwelt there, though it was a land of marvellous beauty and wonderful fertility.  For its forests and plains so abounded with game that it was used by various tribes as a hunting-ground, and here the savage warriors so often met in hostile array, and waged such deadly war, that not the most daring of them ventured to make it their home.  And the name which they gave it was destined to retain its sombre significance for the whites, when they should invade the perilous Kentuckian wilds, and build their habitations in this land of dread.